Blaze
by Satheon and Mimakiko
Summary: Three years after the events of the Volume Three finale, Roman Torchwick is the only one who can prevent the impending apocalypse that threatens to swallow the world in a dark catastrophe, looming and unforeseen. Out of desperation, Ruby travels back in time to prevent the future she has created by killing Torchwick even if it comes at the cost of her own existence. (Rosewick)
1. Chapter 1

Taking the shock from a long fall into her knees, Ruby swore at the wet pavement inches from her face. Air scraped through her throat as she grappled for control over her breathing again. Slowly, she stood, taking in the surroundings of where she landed. Returning to what used to be her former home felt like a dream-the bookstore only a mile off Signal's campus, the Vale skyline at night, the nighttime glow of neon against the black sky.

Ruby cast her eyes upon the cheerful city-goers as they carried about their evenings. Some walked dogs, some chatted on their porches. All of them were civilian lives, who were pulled into an all-encompassing war that would reap the earth beneath their homes. _If only they knew what was coming for them_ , Ruby thought.

The sound of a bell chiming against a door frame snapped Ruby back to attention.

She turned just in time to catch the gesture of her cape as her old self walked into the dust shop on that fateful night. It seemed to wave at her, an acknowledgment of what the future promised. What magazines did she look at that night? The July edition of "The Vale Reporter" had just come out, and she wanted to pick up the next publication of "Weapons Monthly" because Signal's policy wouldn't allow her to get a subscription. She wasn't even supposed to be out that late-she skipped curfew knowing that the shopkeep restocks at night to save time.

Most importantly, she remembered why she didn't get either of those magazines. Ruby looked over her shoulder just in time to catch a glimpse of the man she came back for: Roman Torchwick.

He removed his cigarette from his mouth and scowled. Ruby flinched, jerking her hand up in front of her eyes and stumbling out of the way. One of Torchwick's goons shouldered her forward, and she slipped on the wet soles of her worn-down shoes, tumbling to the ground. Ruby braced herself against the pavement, her already sore knees stinging from the impact with the ground. Fighting the urge to stand up and punch whoever pushed her, Ruby kept her eyes locked on the drops of water that gathered at the tip of her nose and splashed against the blacktop.

They chuckled behind her back, probably pointing. Ruby shook, fighting to maintain control over her emotions.

"Let's go, idiots. We don't have all day."

 _Torchwick._

Ruby had long since forgotten what his voice sounded like. It had been three years since she had last seen Vale like this, so full of life, crime, and a sense of normalcy. Where-or when, perhaps-she came from, there were no broadcasts about the changing events in Vale. It was all the same. Instead of being full of people, soaring buildings, and civilization, it was full of the creatures of Grimm. Her home had long since burned to the ground, and here it was again, erected in all of its metallic, holographic glory.

The bell hanging over the door of her favorite dust shop twinkled again, and Ruby stood, knowing already what would happen next. She brought herself to her feet, covered her eyes from onlookers, and made her way towards Beacon Academy.

* * *

 _The only person who can help you is Roman Torchwick. You remember him, right? You know, people were cheering over the discovery of his charred corpse, even as the last remnants of their city burned to the ground. Isn't it ironic? You killed him that night to "protect the world" or whatever the fuck drives your idiotic hero complex, but now, three years later, Remnant is doomed without him. Do you understand? You're going to be responsible for the end of the world._

Ruby folded the note in the neat creases she pressed into the paper the moment she received it and tucked it into her jacket. She knew, even before receiving this note, that she would have to go back in time, change something. Simultaneously, it all started and ended here, as with all moments in life. She hadn't intended to go this far back, to undo so much of her life and confine herself to a year of solitude, but she realized that she needed to go back to the beginning. Everything was about to change, and this time, Ruby would get it right.

Wrapping her arms around her knees, she settled her eyes on the rolling tide as it crashed against the cliffside. She had one year. One year to save Roman Torchwick's life.


	2. Chapter 2

On the fourth day since she had arrived in Vale, Ruby stuck to the shadows in a popular, crowded market in downtown, aiming to stay out of sight of anyone who might draw attention to her. In the first twenty-four hours she has been—for lack of a better phrase—out of time, Ruby had dyed her hair dark brown, bought an entire new ensemble of clothes that had no trace of red anywhere on them, and she had found contact lenses that would hide the color of her irises.

Her eyes may not be the identifier they used to be (or rather, _will_ be), but if Roman Torchwick so much as suspects that something is off, her entire scheme will go down the drain, he will kill her, he will die. Simple as that.

Her hair, now shoulder-length, was tucked into a loose bun at the back of her head.

When she reached the edge of the wall, she reached around to the rectangular case hanging over her back from a strap that crossed from Ruby's shoulder to her waistline. Carefully unzipping the top flap, she reached inside for the handle, memory directing her how to wrap her hand around the grip. Of course, the version she was used to hadn't been released for mass marketing yet, but without auto-focus, she would live. Her purposes were no longer aesthetically driven.

She removed the camera from the case and judged the distance between her and her target, judging the distance. Through the crowd, she hoped she could avoid suspicion, but Ruby spotted him, approximately one hundred meters away, surveying the options at a vendor in a food market.

Wrinkling her nose, Ruby wondered if he intended to pay. She selected the appropriate lens for the task, attaching it to the camera, and raised it in Roman's direction.

When she did manage to get a clear shot, she was only able to move so fast enough that most obstructions were clear, perhaps only a blur covering either his face, hands, or torso. Ruby scowled at the irony of the situation, that she was enabling him to go on living, but in the process erasing the timeline that created her. The principles that defined time travel were clearly explained to her, chief among them that there was a slim chance she would ever return to a timeline as she would remember them. All of the people she left behind, they would mourn their own erasure from the existence they remember, but Ruby would be entirely cast out in a design of her own making. That is if she doesn't disappear as a result of the paradox she will have created. If she did survive, she would never truly belong anywhere else again. She has already lost everything in a last-ditch effort to save everything, but she has so much more to lose if she fails. Everyone wanted Ruby to be fully aware of the complex nature of her almost impossible situation, to know that her chances of success were astronomically low, but that she was also the last chance of the world's survival.

Ruby kept snapping pictures as the opportunities presented themselves, not letting herself remember how none of them were able to come up with a failproof plan before she left. They had run out of time—they had to send her back before they truly had no time left in order to prepare for the worst.

As Ruby had expected, Roman pocketed two items from the table—from what Ruby can decipher, a water bottle and a protein bar—and walked away with his hands in his coat, no one stopping to look at the face hidden under the baseball cap. No wonder no one had been able to find him. Without his signature bowler hat, coat, and cane, he was unrecognizable.

The only reason Ruby had been able to find him was because she followed the plane, but she almost did a double-take when he didn't step off wearing his regular attire. He had stepped off the runway, brim of his hat pulled down over his eyes, and sauntered back to the financial district on foot. Ruby diligently kept her distance, and she was able to narrow down which apartment building he lived in and which floor he stayed on. By the time she had appeared on the floor herself, he was already gone.

In hindsight, she shouldn't have gone up in the first place. How many sopping wet, post-adolescent girls with silver eyes were in Vale at that time of night? Few enough that it would have drawn suspicion.

Ruby learned her lesson fast. When Roman walked away from the table, she didn't follow him. She knew enough that when he leaves the market, he goes directly back to his apartment, stays for anywhere from ten to thirty minutes, and emerges with a duffel bag that Ruby assumed would have carried his regular attire and his weapon.

With luck, she would predictably be able to narrow down a timeframe in which she could go inside his apartment, investigate, and leave undetected.

First, she would have to learn as many details as she could in the span of two months, including being able to reasonably predict whether or not he's paranoid enough to leave some sort of indicator that something had been tampered with or if he took photos of how certain items or arranged. Ruby knew that her assumption should have been yes, he does, but she figured that perhaps his ego would grant him some confidence that no one will have tailed them.

Today, she wouldn't watch him exit his apartment from the street to record his time. Instead, she would survey him from the window of a nearby restaurant.

* * *

Sitting at a window-side table in the diner across the street, she watched the entrance, dropping food back onto the plate when she wouldn't turn her attention away from the door. In the week she has been there watching him, he has consistently come out of his apartment at the exact same time. She had yet to discover where he went thereafter, but all throughout the week, he had consistently worked under a specific time frame. Worried that she may have missed him, she examined all of her notes again. _Maybe there was something different about Thursdays_ , she thought. There could be a different plan, a different schedule. After all, it had only been four days. _But the past four days have been clockwork. Where is he?_

The sound of metal clattering against the polished tabletop jolted her attention to the other side of her table. Ruby's heart stopped.

Roman Torchwick stood, an apologetic expression on his face, as he began to express fraudulent condolences. "Oh, gosh, I'm so sorry, I didn't know where I was going." He leaned closer and spoke in undertone. "And, I guess, neither did you."

Ruby froze, unable to come up with the words for a response as he sat down at the other side of the table, still maintaining his character. "Please, let me buy your lunch, I didn't mean to scare you."

Not able to say anything else, Ruby only watched as he removed his hat and pushed his hair out of his face. He looked nothing like his mugshot without the makeup and the asymmetry.

His face fell into a cruel smirk as he snatched the notebook in front of Ruby's plate. He sighed, chuckling at the notes she had taken on his whereabouts. "Four days? I guess that means I was two days late." He looked up. "Oh, where are my manners?" Outstretching his hand, he smiled with a gracious affect. "My name is Roman," he said, clear as the glint of light she spotted in the knife just behind the edge of his cuff.

Ruby's head darted around the restaurant. Had no one heard him?

"It's going to look weird when you refuse me a handshake," Torchwick remarked, snapping her attention back to him. "I get the sense that you don't want anyone else intruding."

Dazed, Ruby held out her hand, which Roman took with vigor. He crushed her hand in his grip, causing her to yip in pain, but he releases her immediately.

"I'm impressed," he remarked, turning back to the notebook flipped open to the page where she had recorded all of his whereabouts on a piece of paper. "To your credit, I didn't even notice you until day three." He indicated on the paper, referring to the list of items he had stolen from the market the previous morning. "These are spot-on. Your surveillance tactics aren't bad for—what, nineteen?" He peered at her, intrigued.

Ruby swallowed. "Eighteen."

He scoffed. "That makes sense. You're perceptive, but you fail to realize that it's not a black-and-white game of cat and mouse, predator-prey, whatever analogy you use in your head."

 _You have no idea, asshole._

"More specifically, you failed to anticipate counter-surveillance. I have been watching you. Yesterday, after I realized I had seen that outfit twice that day, with that hair, I decided to see what you'd do. I thought I spooked you, but as it turns out, you were just sparse with your observations."

He reached across the table for Ruby's glass of water, tipping the glass back and drinking until only a centimeter of water was left at the bottom.

"Your place looked pretty nice," he said, nonchalant. "For a crash spot while you follow dangerous people around."

Ruby's eyes widened. He had been inside her apartment. He followed her back. He knew where she lived.

He smiled, wicked with delight as he watched the effect of his words on Ruby's face. He took a deep breath in contemplation. "Listen," he said. "I know the reason you didn't take this to the police," he raised the notebook, "is the same reason that I wouldn't take you to the police for stalking me: you're worried that the police will ID you and throw you into prison."

"What makes you so sure?" Ruby said. Scowling, conviction brewed in her mind.

"The rose has thorns," he muttered under his breath. "Well, for starters—" He pointed to the address scrawled at the top of the page. "—you've had this address for two days without my knowledge, and I haven't been incarcerated."

"So?"

"You don't want to be found."

Ruby was about to retort about how she was looking for something better, but she stopped herself. This was still a time when everyone still thought that Roman was the man in charge of the operation, if they suspected an operation at all. Ruby reserved her statement and kept her mouth closed, frustrated that Torchwick managed to put her at a loss for words.

"What do you want?" she growled.

He fell back against the back of his chair, sprawling his legs underneath the table. One of them kicked Ruby's feet, but he didn't move them. "Actually, I want to offer you a job."

Ruby frowned. "What?"

"A job," he iterated. "You know, how you get money around here?"

"What makes you think I don't have one?"

An eyebrow raised, he began listing items. "You clearly aren't professionally trained, your living style suggests that you either haven't been around a lot or that you just can't afford to put anything else in there, and you refuse to go to the government."

"Thanks, but I'll pass." Ruby pushed her chair away from the table and prepared to walk away, but Torchwick hooked one of his feet around her ankle.

"Of course, if you refuse, I can't let you leave with the information you have." He continued to flip through her notebook.

Ruby sat back down, back straight. She didn't have a choice. "What would you have me do?"

"Well, I'd like for you to take photos like these for me, with accompanying notes such as these. One condition."

Ruby raised her eyebrows in anticipation of a response.

"You report only to me. If I find out that you have been doing work for anyone else, I will find you and kill you myself. Understood?"

"Yes," Ruby said. "I understand."

"Good." He reached into his pocket and withdrew an archaic device with a long antenna, placing it in front of Ruby. "I will contact you on this phone instructing you how to deliver weekly reports and where to receive payment for them. Do not use this phone for any other purpose."

A cold feeling blanched Ruby's stomach—was this conversation being recorded on camera? She covered the phone under the palm of her hand and pulled it over the edge of the table, into her lap. Ruby felt as if she were covered in a thin film of slime, impenetrable and ever-present. Torchwick's blackmail disgusted her. "Who do you want to know about?"

"A student currently attending Beacon Academy. Her name is Ruby Rose."


	3. Chapter 3

Ruby grabbed fistfuls of her hair and pulled the moment the door to the women's bathroom swung shut. She wanted to scream at having screwed up so early in the game. He caught her. She couldn't even stay out of sight for one week—how will she manage acting undetected for one year?

Falling against the wall into a sitting position, Ruby decided that the best course of action for her right now was to go home and mull over her options in a safer space. She stood up, brushed herself off, and walked onto the train platform.

As she approached her home on the train that ran underneath the city, Ruby conducted a thorough run-through of what she needed to do for Torchwick in order to meet his requests without creating suspicion.

First of all, she needed to provide weekly reports on her own self, three years ago, and provide him with updates that would hopefully drive him to write Ruby off as irrelevant. However, she knew how things went the first time; if Torchwick had half a brain, he wouldn't disregard her just because a P.I. who he doesn't know gave him reports that didn't suggest other activity at hand. No, that instead suggests that she is inadequate for the task, and not a single other person in the city is more qualified.

What information could she give him?

There were outright some things that she couldn't do—for example, enter Beacon's campus—which meant that there were simultaneously some things that she could keep from the report without arousing suspicion, but then there were other details that she would have to watch for and omit when necessary.

Even when Ruby thought about her situation logically, she felt as if she were walking along a tightrope made out of barbed wire. There were too many opportunities to fail—especially now.

A thought occurred to her: did this happen the first time? Did she gather intel for Roman Torchwick back when she was the fifteen-year-old? What if nothing has changed? Maybe her interference was inevitable, but Ruby still had the nagging feeling that she created a mess too early on. Her position was hardly navigable, but there was one advantage she could play to. She could use this relationship to keep tabs on Roman's whereabouts. But even then, she would be playing a dangerous game. From what she gathered from her encounter with Torchwick, he didn't like being watched.

Ruby needed a Plan B.

Not that she had a plan to begin with, but this throws major complications that could have even worse implications.

The only way she will be able to control what happens this time is if she can keep everything exactly as it happened before. Otherwise, she may not be able to save Torchwick's life in time.

* * *

Once she arrived at her current living space, she looked at the door handle for signs of tampering. Kneeling in front of the door, she peered into the keyhole, searching for any indication that the lock had been picked. There was paint chipped off the handle around the key hole, but she hadn't paid enough attention to know if that was new or old. Either way, Ruby didn't like that he had no problem getting into her apartment.

Ruby inserted her own key and twisted, pushing the door open. She recoiled at the sight of her apartment.

Whatever Torchwick was looking for, he very clearly did not care about getting caught; the entire three hundred square feet of the place she could only barely afford were in utter disarray. Her clothes, removed from the dresser, strewn across the floor, the kitchen cabinets opened and left hanging on their hinges, the doors to her refrigerator left ajar, which she hadn't gotten around to using yet, Ruby felt a wave of a horrendous feeling tear right through her. She did not want to identify it as fear. Fear would imply that this scared her for things to come. On the contrary, it was reassurance that he would leave evidence knowing full and well that neither of them could do much to implicate the other. Not without time, at least. Instead, this filled her with a sense of guilt and shame, Ruby realizing that he could do these kinds of things to her, terrorize her, because he had something over her head.

He did not ask what she was hiding before he left, which at the time, puzzled Ruby. However, now that she has had time to think about it, she realized that it doesn't really matter. All he has to do if she messes up is drag her under the spotlight and watch the police bury her in a hole so deep she would age another three years just to watch how her failure plays out. He has no idea how much worse it really is. Technically, Ruby is guilty of no crime, but she did not remember anyone informing her that her future self has come back to save someone from something that she was involved in, so her only option is to keep her identity secret, by all means necessary.

Ruby froze. _The note._

She darted to the pile of clothes in front of her dresser, searching for the leather jacket she came in. On the first night, she tucked it into one of the zipper pockets on the inside of the jacket, which she took out and threw into the dresser when she found this place. Panicked, she flew to the dresser, which had only one thing left inside: her jacket.

Tearing open the zipper on the left side, she scanned the insides, her heart skipping five painful beats when she realized it was no longer in there.

"No, no, no," Ruby cried. "You have _got_ to be kidding me!"

Ruby ran her fingers along the cracks and crevices in the wooden frame, sticking her finger into everywhere it would fit, hoping that she would come across something flimsier. She opened and closed the drawers, scanning, scouring. She placed her hands over her face and tried to keep herself from crying. "I'm such an idiot," she said.

Ruby had already begun to form plans to leave town and escape whatever Torchwick could do to her when her eyes caught a fragment of white peeking out from under the dresser. She reached out and pinched it between her fingers. _Paper._

Holding back any assumptions she could jump to, Ruby pulled the paper out from under the dresser, refusing to draw breath until she has read it. She turned the piece of paper over in her hands and unfolded it. On the edges of the folds, she recognized her own strict creases worn into the fresh paper. She sighed with relief and flipped it over.

It was her note.

She sighed with relief and decided in that moment that she would carefully, meticulously go through the things that could expose her identity to the public—or worse, Torchwick.

A piece of yellow paper on the fridge caught her attention. She had not put anything on her fridge. Up until this point, she had completely disregarded it. She stood and walked to her fridge, removing the adhesive sticky note and reading what was undoubtedly Torchwick's scrawled, almost illegible handwriting: "Get a vertical deadbolt."

* * *

Ruby packed her camera bag the same way she had the day before, but today, she instead wore her hair down, planning to get bangs trimmed across her face to hide more of her face. She never looked good with bangs straight across her forehead, so fewer people would be able to spot a resemblance if they ran into her. It was one of the things on her list, titled, "Things That Would Fuck Everything Up."

Only able to come up with five items, she sighed and pushed that into her camera case. She knew that it would be a damning piece of evidence if it were to be found on her person, but as long as she kept away from people, that wouldn't be a problem. Better in her sight than in a place that Torchwick apparently has no problem getting into.

Following the same logic, she took the note and considered burning it, but she decided it may have future value. It is Neo's exact penmanship, and that could come in handy one day. She folded it up along those same hardened creases and placed it between the foam that protected her camera and the lining of the actual case itself.

Running over a mental checklist, Ruby examined the items she had placed inside the bag. Instinctually, she patted her pocket for her wallet, but she forgot—she would have nothing to put in a wallet. She pulled the note out of her bag and picked up a pen off the kitchen counter, writing, "get fake ID." Folding the note in the same fashion as the note that brought her here in the first place, she tucked it away, and slung the strap over her shoulder.

She zipped her hoodie up to her neck as she opened the door and walked out, prepared to settle an impossible balance.


	4. Chapter 4

The exact week after she had met with Ozpin, she had been given a very late pass of admission to Beacon, which, now that she thought about it, probably took someone else's spot on the waitlist. She didn't know how Torchwick had been able to gather so much on her in such a short amount of time. It made her question why he would need someone else to keep an eye on her. Through the hours she had spent waiting for Ruby's arrival to the airship that would take her to the campus for the very first time, she had only derived one suitable answer: tasking Ruby with keeping tabs on her old self would keep her out of the way, with physical evidence that she was keeping busy with his project while eliminating one of the tasks he had prepared to complete on his own time. All of this premise remained contingent on the fact that Ruby was avoiding the government to prevent herself from getting into a pile of trouble, and that Torchwick's threat looming over her would keep her from doing anything he told her not to do.

Ruby groaned and put her face in her hands. _He doesn't even care who I am or what my secret is. It's as if all he considers relevant is the fact that I was a problem to him and that he has something to exploit. But is his disinterest in who I am and what my motivation something I can exploit?_ Going behind a man's back to save his life hardly seemed to have positive turnout, but how would Torchwick react if she were to tell him the truth? Would he write her off as crazy, or would he get just enough to correct the mistakes he made the first time and waste her? Ruby wanted to live as long as she possibly could even if she was just going to die or cease to exist anyway.

It was not hard at all for Ruby to spot herself in the crowd. Back then, she was not necessarily known for social awareness, not even now would she respond properly to social cues, and she flounced across the floor, squealing excitedly. She remembered Velvet with her camera. Would she believe her if she said she was taking pictures for artistic purposes?

Perhaps initially, but Ruby would have to confine her surveillance of her to strict methods. She did not take her camera out, instead removing the notepad from her bag. Glancing at her watch, she wrote, "Arrived at the Beacon Air Ferry station at approximately 10:45 AM. Airship is to leave at 11:00."

Ruby frowned. Torchwick would be dissatisfied if she were only to return with this without writing anything else. She sighed and contemplated following her, but she knew that security would be incredibly strict and all it would take was for someone to ask to see her student ID.

Besides, she remembered her first day like it was yesterday. The air ferry ride took about twenty minutes to get from the residential district up to the cliffside Beacon hovered over. She wrote details down on her notepad as they occurred to her.

"Staying in the Cereus Hall, room 415. Spent most of her time inside Beacon's facilities with no other anomalous activity to record at this time."

Rising to her feet, Ruby adjusted the strap across her chest as she looked at the airship with longing. She sighed and walked out of the station.

* * *

Ruby had found a barber on the same street she lived on that would cut her hair for the price of two sodas from the convenience store next door, but she decided that spending ten dollars on a pair of shears would have been a better idea. You get what you pay for.

She entered her apartment, throwing the bag aside, and pulled the strap over her head to set on the table beside the door. It wasn't until Ruby had removed her jacket, sat down in front of a mirror, and prepared to cut a layer of fringe that she had finally noticed Torchwick sitting on the couch, arms spread across the couch. Did she always have a couch?

Reversing her grip on the scissors, she swiveled in her seat and stood, shears pointed at him. "What are you doing here?"

He leaned forward, taking time in standing up. "I called the prepaid I gave you, but you didn't pick up."

"Prepaid?"

Torchwick lifted his hand to his head, pinky finger and thumb pointed in opposite directions. Ruby walked to the bag on the table. Fishing it out, Ruby heard Torchwick stand up and shuffle his feet across the carpet in his approach to her. Upon finding it, she flipped it open and read, " _1 New Missed Call."_

"It didn't ring," she remarked.

"I know," he said, standing over her shoulder.

Ruby jumped, his sudden proximity frightening her.

"That's why I chose it."

Ruby turned over her shoulder and looked up at him, feeling meek as his eyes simmered.

"What did you get so far?"

Ruby turned and pulled the notebook out, handing it to him.

He took it from her as soon as she held it up. At the first page, he raised an eyebrow. "You're already on her tail?"

She nodded, unsure what this detail would mean to him.

"How did you even manage to find her that quickly?"

"I did some research at an Internet café," Ruby responded.

He flipped through the next pages, skimming. Squinting, he looked at the details she scribbled in her haste to leave the station. If he was suspicious, he said nothing to indicate it, flipping the notebook shut and handing it back to her. Ruby held it protectively over her chest, hugging it as if it were a shield.

"Don't do that again. I'll find you something you can work with." He looked around her apartment. The stray details of his torment fluttered across every surface—Ruby still hadn't finished cleaning up. Ruby reminded herself: deadbolt.

"Do you prefer that I don't use a phone?"

"That might be a good idea," he said. "I forgot—no professional training."

Ruby frowned, but he was right. Before she had arrived, she had handled no covert objectives in her work as a huntress. Ruby was sure she would manage to screw it up somehow, sneezing at the wrong time and ruining everything.

"I'll have you put everything into a file and send it to me over email."

Ruby raised an eyebrow. "Wouldn't that be unsafe?"

"Not if you use a secure line with the proper hardware," he responded.

"I don't understand," she said. "What's so interesting about this Ruby girl?" She knew damn well why, but how would he have known so early on that she would continue to pursue him?

"I have the feeling that I'll be seeing her around." He looked at her. Ruby counted her blessings as he gave her only three seconds of speculation before turning away.

"How are you able to avoid the police so well if you don't do anything to obstruct your face when you're out in public?"

"My eyes are a little closer together than you would expect, and as you can probably tell, I wear copious amounts of makeup to skew the perception of my facial features.

Ruby mentally reviewed the mugshot the police had taken the first time he went to prison. The features of his face looked harder, confident in their defined shape. Without it, he looked softer. His lips were a paler shade of mauve skin, eyelashes hard to see, and the green wasn't as aggressive as she remembered it to be. Perhaps it was the eyeliner. He assimilated in the upper residential district well, wearing pressed clothes that expose a wider breadth of skin than his usual attire, hair styled in popular fashion—if Roman hadn't taken up a life of crime, maybe he could find work as a model. Blushing, Ruby pushed the thought away and focused on cooling her cheeks.

He turned back to her and squinted. "What?" he retorted

The sun was setting, shining through the window and reflecting off the lashes above his eyes.

Ruby turned her face away from the light. "Nothing."

He looked at the shears, still held tightly in her fist. "Were you going to cut bangs?"

Snapping out of her reverie, Ruby looked back at him. "Yeah."

"Don't. Your hair looks good all one length."

* * *

Torchwick left shortly thereafter, having finalized the new terms of their arrangement, one of them being that he would show up whenever he wanted. The unfortunate fact of the matter was that he could let himself in without a key and that she could only lock him out if she were inside first, and he knew just enough that he could show up before she arrived.

Ruby found a place in the apartment that she hoped he wouldn't check: the heating vent. There, she jotted down new ideas and potential plans to sneak into Torchwick's apartment and look around.

Their work relationship may allow for some maneuverability, but Ruby still had her own job to do, outside of the work he was employing her to complete.

Successfully establishing a full page of points, she pressed her face to the wall as she taped the paper to the other side of the wall just beneath the vent. She pressed the heating vent back into place and pushed the couch in front of it.

Ruby turned the pencil over in her hand, not knowing what she should do next. The sun set; Beacon's curfew for first-year students came and passed an hour ago. She would be able to write down the exact time that she returned to her dorm that night. She didn't know there was curfew, and she had to use her semblance to slip just under the wire. 8:59 PM. Ruby knew that it might have been a good idea to write it down, but her memory didn't extend to other nights, and she should only stick with things she wouldn't have to justify. If she started to lie, he would catch her immediately. It's been three years, and she was still a terrible liar.

Pulling her knees to her face, Ruby sat for a very long time and watched the shadows move as the sun disappeared behind the mountains and allowed the full brilliance of the moon to shine through.


	5. Chapter 5

Two weeks later, Ruby had compiled a list of data that would allow her to reliably incise an airtight hole into his coordinated orchestration of a routine. It was almost flawless, and the restrictions she had to limit herself to—it took a while to finally figure out which apartment he lived in.

Ruby put her miniature ladder against the wall and reached up to the camera's wiring with a pair of cutting pliers. They snapped beneath the pressure, and Ruby stepped down, dragging the ladder out of sight and leaving it behind as she reached into her backpack for a tension wrench.

She kneeled in front of the lock to Torchwick's apartment, reassuring herself that he was gone, she watched him walk out of the building. Before she could fill her own head with theories as to why he may have gone back in, she slid the tension wrench into its place at the bottom of the lock and slid the lock pick in above in, scraping along the surface of the keys inside. Ruby could feel their pliant give in her fingertips. It felt strange, knowing that this was the only barrier to entry. The pins slid into place with ease, and Ruby turned the wrench all the way around until the door creaked open at the command of her touch.

Ruby stood, careful not to drag her feet along the floor as she stepped inside. The interior was strangely quiet, which she would have expected, but the silence still startled her. The floorboards, polished to an immaculate gleam, did not creak under the pressure of her weight. Ruby granted herself leave to move with a little more freedom as she took a wholesome look around at the details.

Loose, sheer curtains framed a dining set against the window, a bed through the doorway to her left. Sheets hung in a proper array over the bed, the blanket on the couch folded. The kitchen, strangely clean, had no spots, no evidence of being used. Strangely, his place reminded him of hers.

Once, she read somewhere that attention to detail was important. She did not understand at the time; in fact, she didn't even give a second thought to it until years later when she realized she would have to embark on this mission. The little fragments, the inklings of a path not taken, all of them were important pieces to a puzzle that could not be shifted if she were to succeed. Even after she arrived, Torchwick managed to get the upper hand on her in only four days with the details that she thought left no room for error.

However, details often were the error, and Ruby kept that in mind as she began to survey the closed forum of a space that he lived in.

He had excellent taste—Ruby could conclude at least that—but there were no other indicators that he had spent even one day inside. Ruby inhaled deeply through her nose, hoping to identify any smells that would indicate recent activity. The only smell she detected was a hint of either cologne or a candle, but that would not point her in the direction of anything indicative. Even in the future, details on Torchwick's whereabouts and involvement were for the most part unavailable to the public for lack of interest and investigation, but even in the biographies and essays written on his key position in the takedown of Vale, no one managed to crack into his personal life or clarify the context under which he operated.

She had intended to shed some light on his situation, but the façade that faced her—she wouldn't be able to find much if at all in what was essentially a showroom at a furniture store. Nevertheless, she opened every cabinet, rifled through all documents, looked under every piece of furniture. Under the coffee table, she found a gun holstered in a duct-tape casing. Exercising proper judgement, she removed it and put it in another cabinet, mental note made to put it back before she left. _Always have a contingency_ , she thought.

Ruby closed the cabinet with the gun in it first, frustrated that she couldn't find anything that wasn't legitimate; every single document, usually tax records or lease contracts, was signed by the name "Reese Greenfield." To search his name on the Internet occurred to her, but he had no pictures on social media and the only other results were phone-number lookup sites offering to sell her information.

"No dice," she muttered, putting her scroll back into her pocket.

She walked in circles around the living area, closing every cabinet, replacing every object moved. The clock dictated that she had another thirty minutes before she had to leave, which would leave her a fifteen-minute cushion before his earliest return time. Ruby sighed and prepared herself to give up when she caught a glimpse of her reflection.

Startled by her dark appearance, she almost didn't recognize herself in the mirror, mounted above a dresser. She almost slapped herself.

"Don't fucking tell me," she groaned, reaching over the dresser to lift the frame off the mount.

She carried it to the table and placed in facedown, noticing the edges of a yellow envelope taped to the wooden backing. "Too predictable."

Ruby reached into the envelope and pulled out its contents. A list of information pooled before her, but all of it was about only two people, and both were her.

The word "terminate" drew her attention to the foremost page in the stack.

At the top, he had written "BRUNETTE" with two arrows diverging to opposite sides of the paper. One side was scribbled out, under which she could see "terminate?" scrawled in his horrible, looping penmanship. The option opposing it, circled in red, "Hire for surveillance."

Underneath it, two more options, "terminate" and "continue tertiary operations."

Thankfully, "terminate" was scribbled out again, but underneath it, "terminate" appeared again.

"If you've considered it so much, why haven't you done it already?" she wondered aloud.

Ruby's eyes skimmed to the bottom of the page, which read, " _You're too curious for your own good._ "

"What?" Ruby asked.

Suddenly, Ruby seized, trembling on her feet as bolts of pain shot through her neck into her chest and all the way to her feet. When the electricity finally stopped, she tumbled to the ground in a heap, unable to stumble or put her hands out in front of herself in protection of her face. She landed on her chin, shoulder, and elbow, pain shuddering through her muscles in the places where she hoped for even a phantom of movement.

Her eyes flitted through sheets of the black gloss coating her vision, glancing finally at the distorted face that curdled her stomach. Torchwick loomed over her as he pulled up the hem of his trousers to kneel in front of her immovable body.

"Great minds think alike, huh?" He smiled, but in her perception, the shape of his mouth formed a deceptive, malformed pattern. "I'll sum up the histrionics for you. I knew this would happen, you were easy to deceive, and I always saw you coming."

He reached for the papers that spilled across the floor when she fell, isolating the one she was reading before he incapacitated her. Holding it in front of her watering eyes, he asked, "Well, what do you think I should do?"

Torchwick, smile fading, let the paper slip from his fingers and dance along the floor in a peaceful grace. He stood, looking upon her with a focused gaze, heavier than iron.

He disappeared into the other room in silence. Ruby focused on moving her fingers, hoping that she would be able to stand up before he came back, but he reappeared with a rolling chair and plastic zip ties.

Ruby only managed a whimper as he grabbed her arms, pulling her off the ground, and dropping her on the chair cushion. He began with her arms, extracting each zip tie from a neat pile on the hardwood floor. He pushed her sleeves further up her arm and zip-tied her on both sides of the armrest.

He moved to her feet as she was finally able to lift her head. By the time that she attempted to kick him in her own defense, he had bound her feet together with a rope that restrained the movement of her feet.

Her body shuddered with the realization that she had been left completely at his mercy, breath coming in short gasps as she watched Torchwick pull a chair away from the dining set and sat himself down, splaying his legs out and kicking her feet like he had in the diner three weeks ago, thumbs hanging from his belt loops.

"I should have laid down a sheet, but that would have tipped you off, so I guess I'll just have to clean up the blood myself," he sighed, letting his head fall back.

"How did you know?" Ruby asked, voice trembling. The zipties on her arms were too tight to allow her to turn her arms over, so she clenched her fists, skin grating against the plastic.

"Motion sensor." His head flipped up. "By the way, where's my gun?"

Ruby turned her head away in defiance.

Roman scoffed. "That's okay, I'll find it eventually. I still have my taser," he said, electricity crackling for demonstrative effect. Ruby flinched.

"Now, I gotta be honest. You've been a pain in my ass since day one, and I'm trying really hard for a reason not to kill you."

Ruby pinched her eyes shut, trying to think of a way out.

"Now, while you'd be robbing me of the experience I'm looking forward to, it'd be a lot easier if you just answer the questions I ask."

Ruby scraped for a hold in her psychological autonomy. Her home address, given name, birthdate, and other familiar details panged out, reaching back for her despite her distress. She would have to measure her success in the strength she displays, especially if these are going to be her final moments. She had no contingency for this scenario.


	6. Chapter 6

Ruby stared at the floor in horror. The edges of her vision shook, shrouded in a black haze.

"Let's start with the basics," he drawled, arms crossed lazily over his chest. "What's your name?"

Gasps began pouring out of her mouth when she attempted to form words, her eyes still trained on the lines racing across the floor. She balled her fists and closed her eyes. In the back of her fragmented mind, she thought, _I'm Ruby Rose. But I can't tell you that because you wouldn't even believe me. No one would. What else could I say? Make up a name and hope he wouldn't be able to find anything?_ "I can't tell you," she murmured. "It's compli—"

Ruby suddenly jumped, teeth clenched as she felt the same bolts spiraling back through her again, freezing her in time until the pain finally ebbed. Ruby huffed and her body collapsed, head falling into her lap. In the daze, she saw the red sores on her skin, two pooling blossoms of angry red flesh.

"I'll ask you again," he sighed, fiddling with the taser in his fingers. "What is your _name_?"

"I'm not lying," she sprayed, pulling herself back up. "What do you want me to do here? Tell you a fake name?" Ruby paused, suddenly out of breath. Her entire body felt heavy, and there was a weight on her lungs.

Roman rolled his eyes and prepared to tase her again. Ruby flinched back, "Stop, stop, stop!" she spluttered. "I'm telling the truth!"

Roman leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees, brows knitted. "You have not told me a single thing."

Ruby huffed. "You wouldn't believe me if I told you." Her leg shook from the resonating pangs of pain.

"Try me," he said, lowering his voice. Ruby knew she was agitating him, but she hardly cared. She would not have been able to lie.

Ruby laughed. "Okay then, I'm a huntress assigned to saving your life."

"And why, pray tell—" Roman scoffed. "Would a huntress do that?"

"Your genetics," she said. Her body folded inward on itself. She stared in her own lap, hoping that it would be good enough.

"Explain. Now." He brought the taser up to her eyes, Ruby jumping back and shuddering at the thought of being tased again.

"It's a long story," she muttered.

"Then sum it up." His face contorted again, clearly showing the anger boiling beneath the surface. Ruby's eyes softened. _He has no idea what's coming for him. And as much pain as he has caused and is causing to me right in this moment, he can't die. And if she did tell him the full truth, he would only be confused._

"You apparently have a genetic marker that prevents you from contracting one of the most devastating pandemics in Remnant's history. Your specific genome is the only one of its kind, and we haven't been able to replicate it."

Roman's features changed from that of anger to confusion, and he paused before speaking again. "First of all, my medical records have all been scrubbed. Any and all bloodwork and dentristy in Vale's archives are now gone. So how would scientists even _know_ that I would be a suitable candidate?"

Ruby paused. How much could she afford to give away? "They didn't get it from pre-existing records," she started.

Roman squinted, appearing genuinely confused. "If you're trying to talk your way out of this, you're doing a terrible job."

Drawing in a deep breath, Ruby listed her head to the ceiling and tried to think of ways to phrase it, but she had never been very good at getting herself out of trouble, especially when lying was involved. Ruby had to laugh at the irony, trying to save a man's life when what she was trying to do could very much condemn it. "I'm a shitty liar," she said.

"Explain before I get aggressive with this," Roman said.

Ruby set her jaw, facing him head on. "Fine. They got it from your autopsy."

Roman drew back for a moment, processing what she had said, and then laughing to himself. Ruby stared, unwavering, fingers wrapped around the armrest.

He lurched forward, grabbing the collar of her shirt and pressing the metal prongs on the taser into her throat. Ruby's eyes widened in alarm, shaken by the sudden motion. "You know," he spoke, lowering his voice. "I am almost glad that you're still determined to lie—"

"None of it is a lie." Ruby's eyes harden. "I can identify the exact genome in your genetic makeup right now—not that it would do you much good, but it would say that I at least know what I'm talking about."

"I'm not stupid," he growled. "You want me to run off and try to verify this bullshit so you can slip out and run away?" His hand wrapped around her throat, pulling her even closer.

She could feel his hot breath on her face. "How about we make a deal?"

"You are _not_ in a position to negotiate with me."

"You don't know what you're talking about."

Ruby jerked her right arm, catching his attention. "Cut this one off and I can prove to you right now that I'm not lying. If you aren't convinced, take your stupid cane and blow my head into a bunch of stupid pieces."

"You really think you can get out of your restraints in the time it takes me to cross the room and grab it?"

"No, I know I can't. But you have made it abundantly clear that there's no other way out."

Roman faltered. The grip on her neck loosened, and she tried to detect any signs of hope within his face, but he was exceedingly good at masking it, even as he removed a pocketknife from his pocket. He extracted the blade with a flick of his thumb and stuck it underneath the zip tie. "Keep in mind, I am more than close enough to kill you with this."

The edge of the blade pressed into her skin, causing her to cry out softly. Roman shuddered a breath onto her cheek. Ruby looked up at his skin, inches away from her face, realizing that she had moaned directly into his ear. Ruby blushed.

The zip tie snapped away from her skin, and Roman moved away. Ruby dipped her head to hide the flush on her face, instinctively cradling her forearm.

"Well?"

Ruby's arm shook as she reached up to her eyes. She paused, controlling the shaking in her fingers before she removed the contacts. She blinked a couple of times, raising her face to look back at his.

"Wait." Roman's cool demeanor washed away, replaced with surprise. "You're—"

"Ruby Rose," she finished. "The person responsible for your death."

* * *

 _Helloooooooo! Mima here. I'm gonna be taking over the story for Sera because she has a whole bunch of shit on her plate-especially medical paperwork. She gave me the original direction for this story, and I have made a couple of adjustments to the original plotline, but I think you'll like them :) I'm excited to see what you guys think! Until next time ~_


	7. Chapter 7

The air between them became heavy as they both processed what she had just said.

"That's not possible," he finally said, his tone dazed and confused. He stared into his own lap through his fingers, splayed over his eyes.

"It is, actually," Ruby said. "I can verify it in several different ways."

"Even if this is true, why are you here? Couldn't you just get it from my dead body?" Roman pulled his hands away from his face, replacing them on his temples, eyes trained on her.

"That's the issue," Ruby explained. "To properly study your genetics and manufacture a cure, we would have needed to get a spinal tap. But even if your body weren't charred to a crisp, we only managed to retrieve your leg."

Roman's eyes widened. "You did this to me. What's stopping me from diverting every single resource I have to killing the Ruby Rose here?"

"I think you already tried that. I think _I_ already tried this, and it's starting a whole loop again."

"So?"

"You seemed to know," she wandered. "The night you died, you ambushed us at a warehouse. We all thought the information was suspicious, and we didn't even see Cinder there. I only figured out a couple of months ago that it was because you were probably tipped off that I was going to kill you."

Roman squinted.

"Don't you think it's indicative that since I've been here, I have only tried to keep tabs on you? Being the huntress that I am, and specifically one that has actually killed you in the past?"

"Explain to me how that bears any significance."

"Well, you tell me," Ruby scoffed. "If I already killed you once, why would I risk death by coming back to follow you around if I wasn't telling the truth."

"You could be lying. You could have another motive, and I may not be dead."

Ruby sighed. "Hand me my camera case." Ruby gestured to the bag haphazardly strewn across the floor. "I don't have a copy of your autopsy report, but I can do you one better."

Roman eyed her with suspicion, but he stood, crossing the room and bending over to grab the case. "What am I looking for?"

"Between the foam lining and the canvas exterior," she supplied.

Roman traced his finger along the edge until his skin brushed against the still crisp edges of the note, carefully maintained. He extracted it, unfolding it with one hand as he dropped the camera to the ground.

Ruby cringed. That thing was damn expensive.

Frowning, Roman held it up. "Who gave this to you?"

"I think you know who," she answered. "Now, can you cut me out of this or do I have to prove myself further?"

"You shouldn't even know who this is," he mentioned.

Ruby laughed sardonically. "Oh, trust me, she knows who I am, and she is not a fan."

"Why shouldn't I kill you right now?"

Ruby paused. "What?"

"You heard me," he snarled. "You _killed_ me, you bitch. Why shouldn't I kill you?"

Ruby swallowed, tears pricking the back of her eyes. "Honestly, I don't know. I don't think it'll matter if I live or die, but I just know that you need to live. And if you die, and I'm not there to stop it, everyone _I_ love will die…or worse. So to me, you matter more than anything else."

Tears brimming and gasps gently escaping her lips, Ruby swiped her palm over her eyes.

Roman examined her with critical analysis. _No_ , she thought, _he isn't capable of empathy—if I want to persuade him, I have to think like he does. What could be useful for a man who never pays for anything?_

"Think about it this way," she said. "I come from three years in the future. Anything you want to know from now until then will be totally available to you if you keep me around." Ruby bit her lip. She sounded fraudulent, scheming. All of her ulterior motives had just been laid out in front of him, but still, she was unsure.

Roman shook his head. "How could I possibly trust you if you're supposed to be the person who kills me?" His fingers began to crinkle the note.

Ruby frowned. "How could you not? You found out from _me_. I'm selling myself out even just by telling you."

"And what happens if I go out and kill the younger you as you're walking down the street?"

Ruby stopped. She had not considered the implications of her younger self's death. One on hand, she was already changing the future—or, so she believed, but she still could not know exactly what would happen if she died. "I have a feeling we're just two separate people now. She's whole, exactly where she belongs, but I'm just a misplaced fragment stuck in this place. I think that once I start changing things, she's going to be a lot different from me in three years." Ruby cast her eyes out the window, gazing longingly at the street below. She counted the things she would give to go back and live the life she used to have before it was taken from her in one crushing moment.

She turned to focus on him. "I will be nothing but honest and forthcoming with you. Their lives depend on it."

"If what you're saying is true—that you're a different person—why should you care about them at all? Are they still your family?"

"Of course they are," Ruby declared, fuming at the implication. "They may be completely lost to me now, but that's still _me_ walking around down there, and that's still them. If I have to suffer and sacrifice everything just so they can go on, then that is exactly what I'm going to do."

Tipping his head, Roman continued. "But the people they would become if I somehow manage to stop this supposed disease, you wouldn't know them at all. They would be entirely different from what you remember."

"From what _I_ remember, that's a good thing. I hope they don't even recognize the wretched ghost I have become," she spat.

"Shit, you don't have a whole lot of self-esteem anymore, huh, kid?"

"I am not a kid. Not anymore."

Roman rolled his eyes. "Oh yeah, where would that put you? Twenty years old?"

"Eighteen."

"What?" he said. "You're eighteen?"

"Yes," she responded, annoyance wavering her tone.

"You're telling me a fifteen-year-old is attending Beacon right now?"

Ruby groaned. "Yes, I got early admission."

"What sort of exception were you?" he asked, genuinely curious.

"Really, really special circumstances. Look, it's a long story. Can we just cut to the chase here? I'm hungry." Ruby pointed to her other arm, still bound to the chair.

Roman gave her the pocket knife and stepped over to the couch, poring through every detail.

Ruby cut herself out of the zip ties and reached down to undo the knot around her ankles.

"'Idiotic hero complex?'" he asked.

"Yup, that's me. What about it?" Ruby sat up and stretched her legs.

"Nothing," he chucked lightly. "It just sounds like something she would say."

"Well, as cynical and patronizing as she is now, she's even more so three years later," she stopped herself before she could say—

"After I died?" he said, finishing her thought.

"Yeah," she muttered. Ruby shrunk in her seat.

"Don't worry about it. I'm sure I'll be fine."

"Don't be so sure," she said. "A lot of people want you dead, and not a lot of people would have been happy to know that I'm doing this."

"Well in that case, you're going to need a better disguise."

* * *

 _Hey, everyone! Mima here, again. If you're here from Fallen World wondering where she is when updates to this story are being published, don't worry. She has to meet a deadline for some paperwork and all of her writing ability going into personal statements for scholarship appeals. She only started yesterday...and the actual deadline for everything she has to submit is tomorrow. Yikes. Well wishes to her, and to all of you! Until next time, lovelies! :)_


	8. Chapter 8

Ruby fiddled with her fingernails impatiently as she waited for the order to arrive at their table. Thumbing through documents on his scroll, Roman sat with one arm crossed over his chest and tucked under the opposite elbow. His eyes drifted upward, cast in their defiant green shade.

"Can you stop fidgeting?" He said, breaking the silence.

His words snapped Ruby out of her reverie. "What?"

He pointed his scroll to her hands, now folded on the table. "That."

Ruby looked down. "Was I doing something."

"Whatever. Forget it," he muttered, returning to his screen.

Truthfully, Ruby was not surprised. She had been antsy since they had arrived. Such a semblance of normal life was a long-lost memory, and here she was once again, having a casual meal in a restaurant. Granted, the situation itself was peculiar, given that the man sitting across from her and offering to pay for her meal was the wanted criminal who just tortured her into telling him who she really was.

The people, the noises. Pans clanging in the kitchen. Waitress's heels clicking across the tile. Lively conversation. Ruby did not trust any of it, as if this reality would show itself to be an illusion once she let her guard down. One idea occurred to her: this was some sort of test, a show of a normal life to throw her off. Ruby wanted to fall back into her old patterns, relaxing and truly unwinding from all the stress. However, she could not—none of it would last. In one year's time, all of it would go up in flames, riots flooding the streets and terrorism rampant. Friends would die, family fall apart, and even Ozpin, the strongest of them all, would begin to fear that the end was near. The images made Ruby feel fragmented in her core, the very drive that pursued justice crumbling in the prospect of demise.

The universe was spitting in her face, hinging the fate of the world on the most unreliable person who could have ever been in this position. With a weary gloom, she realized that this was all she had left: hope.

A cheery-eyed waitress approached their table with two plates adorning the arms of a pressed shirt rolled up to the elbows. "Here's your order, ma'am, hash browns and waffles."

"Thank you." Ruby forced a smile, watching as the waitress walked away with a carefree sway of her hips.

Ruby stuck a fork in her food. "I think I need to sleep."

"You can sleep on my couch," Roman remarked, not taking his eyes away from his scroll.

"I can sleep on _my_ bed."

Groaning, Roman pushed a hand through his hair. "I want you somewhere I can keep an eye on you."

"You already know where I live," Ruby protested. "I just want to be alone."

Roman finally looked up at her, placing his scroll face down on the table. "Why?"

"I have a lot to think about."

Roman took a sip of his water. "Like what?"

"A game plan. And personal stuff," she said, muttering her second statement.

"Well, I can't help you with the personal stuff, but I can help you with a plan of action." Roman pocketed his scroll and waved a waitress over to their table. "Can we get a to-go box for these?" Roman reached for his wallet.

"Sure!" She responded. "Let me get your check."

As soon as she walked away, Ruby spoke again. "I can handle it on my own."

"First of all, I'm a criminal mastermind, remember?" Roman extracted a credit card, placing it on the table. "Say what you want about my combat skills, but I happen to be quite the credible source for underground information, and I _earned_ my reputation."

Ruby shot him a spiteful look. "Yeah, no kidding."

"And second, it's _my_ future."

"Yeah, but you would hardly be any help because you don't know what happens."

"There is a painfully simple solution to that."

The waitress returned, check and Styrofoam boxes in hand. Roman handed her his card. "Thank you." He smiled, returning his gaze to Ruby. "You're going to need a fresh set of eyes."

"Fine, then," Ruby scowled. "Can we at least do it tomorrow, then?" Ruby crossed her arms, guarded. "I need some time tonight to rest and recharge."

"I have an idea," he suggested. "Why don't I come back with you, you can rest in your shitty bed, and I can keep an eye on you."

"Better than you having me sleep on your—wait, why do you need to keep an eye on me?"

Roman gave no response, reaching across the table to grab her plate and dumb the contents inside a box.

"You still don't trust me, do you?" Ruby winced.

"What makes you think I ever did?"

* * *

The taxi ride back was silent. Roman ignored the driver's requests to make conversation, but he still tipped him generously, handing him thirty lien when the meter only reached fifteen.

Ruby thanked him and stepped out, hitting her knee on the door. She winced, but quickly stood up to hide it from Roman, who met her eyes when she looked back at him on the other side of the car. He chuckled at her and shook his head.

"Shut up," she said.

"I didn't say anything," he defended.

Ruby clenched her fingers around her scroll. "Could you be less annoying, please?" Ruby walked up to the door to her building, removing the scroll from her pocket and holding it over the scanner. When the light glowed green, she pulled the door open, holding it for Roman.

He followed and walked behind her up the two flights of stairs leading to her apartment. "I forgot to ask something. How did you find this place?"

"Your former group used it for something two years from now. I figured it would be unoccupied now."

"Slick," he said. "I was surprised to find living space in a storage building."

"Not really meant for living," she said. "I have it rented out for the next four months. After that, I don't know."

"That still leaves you six months shy of my death."

"I was planning on getting Ozpin's help, anyways."

"Are you sure that's the best idea?" he asked.

Ruby kept her chin down as she slid her key into the lock. "There's a lot you don't know about him."

"Oh yeah? Like what?"

"Well, I'm not going to tell you," she said.

"Yeah? And why's that?"

Ruby turned on her heel, defining her point with a point heel. "You're still a bad person. For all I know, you could just run off to your buddies and tell them everything you manage to pry out of me."

Roman rolled his eyes. "If what you say is true, they _betrayed_ me."

"What's that supposed to mean?" Ruby pushed the door open, practically throwing herself inside.

"That warehouse. You're saying you never saw anyone else there but me and a couple of cronies?"

"Yeah, what about it?"

"That's a contingency," he answered. "The plan was in the works to take some of you guys out. And if none of those other bastards showed up, they just meant to take me out, which means they may already be planning against me."

"You know, you could be doing the same thing you accused me of," she said. "Telling me something that'll get me to trust you."

He laughed. "That's true."

Ruby stared at him, mouth agape. "You're not going to even try to defend yourself?"

He shrugged.

"Ugh." Ruby pinched the bridge of her nose.

"Both of us can say whatever we want. That doesn't change the fact that you apparently killed me."

"Yeah, and I had reason to!" she shouted.

"My point exactly."

Ruby's eyes softened. She turned away, facing the one-room apartment she was supposed to call home. Despite everything else he has told her, Roman had a point. She could hardly trust him; he could hardly trust her. "This is too difficult a relationship."

"I'm a wanted fugitive. I deal with these kinds of relationships all the time."

"Yeah, but I haven't. And you know these circumstances are different," she said.

"They really aren't," he sighed. "Do you have any liquor?"

"No," she spat, disgust layered in her voice. "I don't even have an ID yet, and even if I did, I wouldn't have it."

"I have a guy for that. I'll put you in contact."

"I don't need a guy for booze," she said.

"Cute. Fake IDs." Roman sauntered over to the couch and fell across the cushions. "You just need fingerprints and a passport photo."

* * *

 _I wish I could make this longer, but my stupid head hurts too much to let me function. Owwie._


	9. Chapter 9

Ruby had fallen asleep to the sound of Roman typing away on her laptop. He said nothing about what he was trying to do, but Ruby decided not to ask him about it. After all, she had a rough day, and she was more than happy to put it past her with a good night's rest.

Though Ruby almost welcomed the intrusion of her dreams, the toilet flushing in the room next to her, waking her from the vivid images of her darkened past. They were all she seemed to dream about lately. Ruby lay in bed with her eyes sluggish in their movements, air bristling the stray hairs in her face. Her apartment, once glowing with the soft rays of sunset, had darkened. Outlines only gave her suggestions, but her eyes could not focus.

She sat up, pulling the blanket around her as she huddled her knees to her chest. Ruby looked behind her at the bathroom door, waiting for him to emerge.

The sink shut off, followed with Roman's silhouette appearing, backlit by the bathroom light.

"You're awake?" he said, returning to the couch.

Ruby rubbed her eyes. "What time is it?"

He turned on his scroll. "Three in the morning."

Ruby tossed her legs over the edge of the bed. "You're not tired?"

He shook his head. "I'm used to sleeping six hours."

"Still, though," she yawned, stretching her arms above her head. "What were you doing?"

"Catching up on some work, keeping an eye on you. Nothing special." Roman fell onto the couch, tipping his head back as he reached for a flask.

"Illegal stuff?" Ruby pondered aloud.

He faced her. "What do you care?"

Ruby said nothing, shrugging her shoulders in response. She pushed off the bed and stumbled over to the fridge. Expecting it to be empty, she squinted at the unopened gallon of water sitting on the top rack, next to them, an unopened bag of plastic cups. She scratched her head.

"Picked it up with a pack of cigarettes earlier."

Ruby looked back at Roman, who was midway through a drink from his flask, laptop perched on his lap. She hardly knew what to make of it, so she ignored it, pushing away the thought and reaching for the water.

As she poured herself a cup, Roman spoke up. "Have you ever fired a handgun?" he asked.

Ruby sighed, trying to remember. "A long time ago," she responded. "Part of the whole thing where we made our weapons."

"Why's that?"

Ruby sealed the jug and replaced it inside the fridge. "We got to test out a whole bunch of things to figure out what we wanted to use for a weapon."

He grunted.

Ruby walked back to her bed. "Why do you ask?"

"You're gonna need a sidearm. Something you can conceal."

Ruby frowned. "Can't most of the drones tell nowadays whether or not you're walking with a concealed weapon?"

Roman perked up. "What?"

Ruby jumped. "Oh, right. Future thing."

He turned back to his laptop and began to drill away at the keys. "The way you make the future out to be, I'm surprised they still had the money to funnel away into military resources."

"No, it wasn't military," she said. "The general turned all of them over to be the respective kingdoms' property. They all decided that would be worthwhile programming, but it didn't help people unless you were in one of the few places that wasn't out of control."

Ruby remembered the riots when the disease first broke out. Everyone was in such a panic, and at first Ruby wondered why they would broadcast it so publicly until she learned that infection was a lot easier when the target displayed high levels of stress in their system. She had looked one of them in the eyes, but for some reason, she wasn't infected. And no one had been able to figure out why, even with the two years' worth of time that they had. If they had more time, maybe Ruby could have avoided all of this…

"What is this disease, anyway?"

Ruby had not noticed she had been staring at Roman, completely spaced out for a moment. Thankfully, he did not seem to notice. "It's supposed to be some sort of Grimm-related thing. Last stage is when you start turning into a monster and mumbling some incoherent stuff."

"Right," he trailed. "And how am I supposed to help with that?"

"It's a specific gene somewhere. I don't understand all of the science behind it, but doctors said they could make a vaccine out of it."

"What do my genes have to do with any of that?" He swiveled on the couch, turning to face her.

"Well, you know how you're a sociopath?"

Roman rolled his eyes.

"It's not necessarily because of any trauma or anything like that. Theoretically, it's supposed to make you feel only a limited range of emotions."

"I do anger pretty well," he replied, nonchalant.

Ruby ignored him. "That's my point. The vaccine is supposed to act like an antidepressant, making you feel less of stuff. Without all of that, we might be able to avoid infection."

"What makes you think it'll work?" he asked.

"Well, that's the weird part. Apparently, the doctors doing your autopsy found a whole crapload of the spores in your leg, but usually by that point, your skin had already turned black."

"Your point?"

"If your leg _was_ turning into Grimm, we wouldn't have anything to look at, it would have already disappeared, but didn't. It was completely human."

"So I'm a carrier?" he concluded.

"I guess." Ruby tucked hair behind her ear. "I don't remember all the science-y stuff. That's all I know."

"That's pretty vague," he remarked.

"Hey, those medical terms are literally a different language," she defended. "A dead one, too. Gibberish."

However, Roman was not listening to her. He had a hand up to his mouth, pulling his lip as he was deep in thought. It only lasted a second, but Ruby could have sworn she had seen something in him—something evocative of forgotten pain. Though, Ruby could have been imagining it because in the split second that she noticed him, he noticed her, and he immediately turned back to the computer screen.

* * *

 _Good morning! It is currently 7 AM where I live, and guess what? This schmuck hasn't gotten ANY sleep yet-and I have an eight-hour shift in...five hours? And I haven't showered. I don't know what I'm going to do. Ugh._

 _seraphimnight: Thank you! Welcome to the dark side._

 _Rosewick4ever: Bless your soul I'm so glad you like it this is really fun to write_

 _Thank you so much guys! Also, you may have seen this update on Fallen World, but we just made a forum so you can pester us about updates and shit. Search "Satheon and Mimakiko." Okay, buh-bye!_


	10. Chapter 10

Later that morning, Ruby slouched over a plate of microwaved waffles, poking at it with a fork. She was not as hungry as she thought she would be.

"I'm gonna have you do the same thing you were doing," Roman said, breaking the silence.

Ruby lifted her head. "What?"

"Following Red around."

Ruby raised an eyebrow. "I already know what happens, though. What gives?"

"That's exactly why." Roman stood, gathering his belongings into his bag.

"Oh," Ruby realized. "You want me to see if anything changes."

"Exactly."

Ruby raised a hand to her mouth. Thinking back, she remembered that this was around the time when the Beacon dance happened. A couple of days beforehand, they found him at the White Fang rally. "Hey, Roman?"

"Yeah." He slung the strap of his bag over his shoulder.

"Have you been to any White Fang rallies yet?"

This caught Roman off guard. He tensed and watched her warily. "How do you know about that?"

 _Not yet, then_ , she thought. "Blake is going to be there for when you unveil the paladin."

"What do you expect me to do about it?"

"I don't know," Ruby mused. "Something different?"

"Like what?"

Ruby scratched her chin. "Um, I don't know."

Roman shuffled over to her, reaching up to touch his own chin in kind. "What would doing anything differently help?"

"That warehouse was a White Fang thing. We only figured you would be there because we knew you had something to do with them."

"So what, then?" he said. "Don't show up?"

"I guess," Ruby muttered.

He shook his head, clicking his tongue. "Can't do that. I take orders from someone else. They wouldn't be too happy about that."

"I wouldn't be so worried about Cinder," she said.

His head perked up, but his expression quickly morphed into deviant amusement. "I didn't expect a little brat like you to figure that one out."

"I probably know more than you do if Cinder threw you into a shit pile she couldn't clean up," she shot back.

"You better watch it, punk." His eyes narrowed.

"What, asshole? What are you going to do about it? Oh, that's right—nothing. Because you were stupid enough to get yourself killed." Ruby matched his stare with equivalent intensity.

He answered with the flattened palm colliding with her cheek. Quickly pulling her head back, she saw that his fists were balled up at his sides, his face growing more agitated by the second.

"Is that all you got?" she growled.

"Not even close," he seethed.

They faced each other in a standoff, Ruby scanning his movements. His fists were shaking now, but he contained it to his arms. His face contorted with the shapes of rage moving over them, his mouth hardened in a defined line. The implications of what he wanted to do were presented themselves so clearly on his body, but for some reason, he restrained himself, waiting it out.

He ceased, stringing his fingers around the strap across his front. He raced to the door of her apartment, flinging it open and disappearing without another word.

Ruby stalled, mouth hanging open, until the sound of the door crashing against its frame jostled Ruby. She shook her head and examined herself in the mirror. There was a vague red imprint on the flesh of her skin, but it didn't sting like most slaps do. In fact, the shock was more of an impact that the pain it left behind.

She decided not to dwell on it any further, leaving her reflection in the mirror, and turning to her work.

* * *

Two days have passed, and in that time, Roman had not said a single word to her since. As far as she knew, he was carrying on at his own place, dealing with the same predicament as she was. The only time he had even remotely made contact was when he slid an envelope under her door, enclosing a multitude of forged identification—a passport, driver's permit putting her at twenty-two years old, and a license for carrying a concealed weapon. She laughed at that last one.

In the early afternoon on a standard Tuesday morning, Ruby sat outside Beacon Academy, trying to pinpoint exactly what she was doing. In the thirty minutes she had spent on the bench, she had written out an elaborate time sheet that should have been able to predict where she would be when. Sleep schedule, studying habits, classes—all alongside her…extracurricular activities.

Ruby set the pen down and rubbed the cramps out of her palm. The ache for rest cried out to her from her marrow, reaching deep and making it difficult to stack her spine in an upright position.

Without thinking, he opened her bag once again, wrapping her fingers around the cold plastic of Roman's burner phone. He had not used it once to call her, and neither did she. Ruby sighed, reaching instead for the metal water bottle.

She screwed off the lid and cringed—the smell came out in the same tones as nail polish remover. Steeling herself with a breath, she brought the rim to her lips and tipped the bottle back.

The taste burned her tongue, worse than any other medicine she had taken in her life. When she finally swallowed, shivers ran through her arms and chest, and for a moment, she thought she was going to throw up right there in Beacon's courtyard. The feeling faded, and she decided she would try again, bringing the bottle back up.

The second time was easier, Ruby remembering how her uncle Qrow used to throw back a swig from his flask. She swallowed immediately, and the only feeling she could register was the lingering sensation in her mouth.

Sealing the bottle, she looked around for passersby who might have noticed her struggling with a couple of shots, but no one paid any attention to her.

Ruby let out a sigh of relief. The last thing she wanted was to find out if her forged ID was good enough to show to a police officer. Though, one thing did unsettle her: Ruby Rose, in the flesh.

She was almost skipping through the courtyard, headphones bouncing with her. Knowing her own behavior, Ruby figured she was heading to the air ferry station to take her across the lake to the city—probably to shop for more dust cartridges.

 _I used to be so wasteful with ammunition_ , she thought. Precision proved to be a tough learning curve.

She passed her without even looking at her older self, but then again, situational awareness was never her strong suit. Especially in social situations. Diverting her thoughts from a strange trail of self-awareness, she realized that she would not have carried herself that way if the White Fang rally had already happened. So as far as she knew, nothing should have changed.

Ruby quickly removed her camera and snapped a quick photo. It was an older style of camera that immediately printed out the resulting image. It was somewhat blurry, and she hardly envisioned any prospect of usefulness for it, but nevertheless, she scribbled down a couple of details to keep up a timeline on when things would begin to divert from normal.

Taking her time in packing her things away safely, Ruby stood and proceeded to the Beacon library. Scroll in hand, she began typing a report for Roman when she noticed what two shots was doing to her system. She was not nauseated, but she did feel a slight degree of dizziness that she would just have to work with. No alcohol in the library, she remembered.

She hammered her fingers on the keyboard.

 _Looks like nothin hds changed yet. Rubys still walking around qs normal, and there's nothing new. Not tht I notice. Nothing has changed. Rmember that the white fang rally is important plz._

She took photos of all of the pictures she had accumulated that day and pasted them into the document she was working on. Once she finished, she walked up to a print station and punched her old ID number on the ten-key, holding her scroll face down on the scanner.

The page printed out in a few moments, and upon examination, Ruby noticed a few spelling errors. With a vague disregard for professionalism or whatever would have made her care in any other situation, she ignored it and turned to leave.

Ruby remembered all of the things she was fighting for. Yang, Blake, Weiss...all of her friends. She didn't know what she would be able to do or if it would be enough, and the weight of it came crashing down like a tidal wave onto her soul. Once she was outside again, she removed the bottle from her bag.

* * *

"For crying out loud, I _know_ the guy upstairs," Ruby slurred. "Just let me up, holy _shit._ " Ruby caught herself on the counter.

"You are clearly intoxicated," came the reply. Ruby strained to hold her head up high.

"Whatever," she grumbled.

Despite the receptionist's protest, she made her way over to the elevator, punching the up button repeatedly. The lobby was not small, but she still managed to attract the attention of everyone inside. She hardly cared, stuffing her hand back into her bag. Screwing off the cap, she held it up to her face, but only drops poured out.

The doors opened, and she stepped inside just as the receptionist decided to run after her. Ruby waved with a jovial smile, metal sliding shut between them. The elevator began moving with a grating thud, and she keyed in the floor number.

"Was it that floor?" she wondered aloud. "I dunno. I can always make more copies." Ruby trailed off.

A hazy thought occurred to her while she struggled to put her water bottle back in the bag. What if he was home when she delivered it? Maybe the schedule she had tried to establish was a total load, and he would not be there. But on the other hand, he would be there. None of it really mattered because for all she knew, he was at as much of a loss as she was. Schrodinger's cat was a hard man to pin down.

She stumbled through the opening doors and identified the proper door number down the hall, slipping the page beneath. As she was bent over, she bumped into the door.

"Shit," she muttered.

She grabbed the doorframe, steadying herself back on her feet and pushing off to take steps toward the elevator.

Ruby heard a sound behind her, followed by a voice. "Ruby?"

She turned her head, letting her head sling over her shoulder at a crooked angle. Roman leaned out of the doorway with her report in hand.

He covered his nose. "Are you drunk?"

"What gave it away?" The awkward angle at her neck made her hiccup.

"Get in here."

Ruby idled, trying to think. Her thoughts came in gibberish.

" _Now._ " He wasted no time in waiting for her to gather herself and walk inside, stepping out and grabbing her by the arm. His grip around her bicep was vicious, but she hardly felt the pain. Instead, she felt the nausea creeping back up inside her until it grew overwhelming, shaking all the way to her fingertips and tops.

He pushed her in, and she failed to keep herself steady. The impact of her head on the ground was enough to send her over, and before Roman could say anything, she threw up.

* * *

 _Fun fact about me: let's say Ruby drank about the equivalent of eight shots in this chapter...first time I went to a party, I had no idea how much to drink, so I just chugged a bottle...twice. Mega hangover. Lasted all day. Oh boy. It was not fun. So here's a fun new thing you should try if you start drinking: start out with beer or wine, and if you do graduate to shots (ew, not worth it) space out shots by AT LEAST twenty minutes so you can pace yourself. If you're at a frat party, ONE HOUR BETWEEN SHOTS. I have been drugged, and oh my goodness. No. Drink responsibly, friends._

 _cipher111996: It's been a while. How ya been?_

 _Rosewick4ever: Thank you so much! And I thought a plot dump in a fanfic would drive everyone up the wall._

 _Bisous, chatons!_

 _-Mima_


	11. Chapter 11

Slung over the edge of a trashcan, Ruby continued to heave. Her head swirled through rolling pangs of dizziness. Her weight would not settle in one place, and she kept shifting her body between gag reflexes.

"I get you an ID, and only one day later, you show up at my door shitfaced," Roman sighed. He held out a water bottle.

Ruby brought her fingers up to the bottle, but before she could touch it, her body contracted. Her throat squeezed painfully as she held her face over the trashcan, but the only thing coming out of her mouth anymore was a spray of saliva.

When the heaving ceased, she fell back against the wall and took the water bottle from Roman.

"What were you thinking?"

Ruby tossed her head with a grunt, figuring that he asked rhetorically. She opened the bottle and chugged until nothing remained within. Her consciousness faded at its edges, sounds barely coherent and sights fleeting in memory.

A pillow appeared in her lap, punctuated by Roman's voice as it faded away. "Try not to ruin it, please."

Ruby snuggled it to her face, sliding down the wall until she was on the floor. The sensation in her body was different from any other pain she had experienced. Pain like a gunshot wound was centralized, ignorable. But this deep-seated nausea rolled relentlessly through her body, and even after doing nothing but throwing up for the past thirty minutes, she would sooner trip over her own feet on the ground than successfully stand.

She felt the urge to stay awake, to fight the sweeping darkness as if it would kill her. The anxiety was the most damning; the situation she was in would most certainly not kill her, but her mind kept telling her that she needed to get to a safe place before she passed out. She would have given anything to be in her childhood home in that moment.

Despite her inner monologue, she appeared to be completely thoughtless, a shell of a body that shut down.

"I feel like garbage," she murmured. "How do I stop this?"

"Water and time," Roman responded. "How much did you drink?"

"Uh…like, eight ounces."

He laughed. "Oh my god, that's pathetic."

Ruby had no energy to retort as Roman cracked himself up over Ruby's predicament.

"Water," she said.

As Ruby slept on the floor, Roman made arrangements for the White Fang rally. Despite his sarcastic air in his response to Ruby's drunk request, he considered the implications of failing to make an appearance. However, if he failed to attend, he would have to answer to Cinder, who might send him to early retirement. The implications would stretch miles out, and according to Ruby, this may be the pivotal point between life and death.

He could not care less about the welfare of the world, but Ruby was right; having someone who could predict the events of the next three years could be very lucrative—among other things. He wondered if he could dig all the pertinent information out of her now and kill her once he knew everything. But how long would that take? And how slowly would he have to get information out of her to ensure that she would not learn of his true intentions?

Roman scratched his head. As much as it damaged his ego to admit, he knew nothing about the shape that the future would take. If he decided to kill her too soon, he might be cutting himself off from information that could save his neck down the line. If he killed her too late, he may be imprisoned once the rest of the world had what they needed out of him.

Soft mumbling permeated the silence and called Roman's attention over to Ruby, who now stirred.

"Hey, Ruby," he called out.

"Hm?" she hummed.

"Are Neo and Junior immune to this disease?"

"Nuh-uh. Junior's dead and Neo's close." Ruby pushed herself off the ground with shaking arms. "Why you ask?"

He turned away from her. "Just curious."

"And before you get any ideas, you won't be able to manufacture the cure without Ozpin's help."

He laughed softly. "You're a lot smarter than I thought."

"Damn straight." Ruby prepared to stand, but she suddenly settled back down, putting a hand to her head. "Shit, that hurts."

"I have painkillers in the cabinet." He gestured to the kitchen.

"Have you found your gun yet?" she asked.

"Yeah, didn't take long to find."

Ruby groaned as she found solid footing. Her form in his peripheral operated in a state of garish disarray, shoulders hunched and back misaligned.

"What are you doing?" Ruby reached for the painkillers on the top shelf, fingers grazing the container but failing to wrap around it.

Roman rolled his knuckles across his cheek, watching her with a distracted murmur in the back of his head.

Ruby turned. Her eyes locked onto his computer, adjacent from a flyer dangling from his fingers. "Oh, White Fang stuff." She rubbed her head.

Roman felt the urge to look away, but for some reason, he wouldn't give in. He was somehow fixated. The way the edges of her body are sharply defined, even in her post-intoxicated state. The shapes moved in a mesmerizing fashion, blurring his vision until he could see nothing but her outline, the fringes of her hair swaying gently with each movement.

He stopped and returned to his work with a hasty defiance.

"Have you decided?" she asked.

"No. Batting around the particulars."

Ruby shrugged and walked away, the bottle finally in her hand. He failed to notice that she had finally been able to reach it.

"What particulars? I might be able to help."

"I doubt that," he said.

"You mean the person who has insider information on what the future's gonna be?"

Roman rolled his eyes. "Okay then—let's say I don't go. What then?"

"I dunno. I figured you would have a plan for that. Don't you criminal types always look for the way out before you look for the way in?"

Roman's face fell. He paused before speaking again. "This _is_ my way out."

"What are you talking about?" Ruby's interest piqued at his sudden change in tone.

"It's a deal I made a long time ago. I'm sure you know the details," given how things have reportedly turned out.

Ruby raised an eyebrow. "I have no idea what you are talking about."

"Strange," he said.

"…And?" Ruby's eyes bore into him with such an intensity that almost startled him. He had seen so many terrifying faces, torn apart by scars and pain, but this kind of determined focus on such an honest, unyielding face was unexpectedly new. Under her gaze, eyes shining as they always did, shrouded by that dark curtain around her fair, unblemished face, he stopped.

Roman sucked in a breath, ignoring her and resuming his business.

* * *

 _Sorry, I'm an asshole and I haven't gotten many days off from work. It's really hard to write when you have a soul-sucking job that requires you to talk to people at any given moment during the day for SEVEN HOURS AT A TIME. Yikes. Someone save me._

 _Well, on to reviews!_

 _cipher111996: I don't know if he'll make an appearance (he has a very high alcohol tolerance), but you'll definitely see him in positions where he needs to blow off a lot of steam-he just doesn't do it with booze, per se..._

 _neverfadehaz: I feel the same way about most of the fanfictions I used to read...it's like they didn't get updated at all in the time since I started reading them. I know they definitely can't because of some copyright stuff, but it would be great if they could give out monetary incentives to people who publish updates regularly. Kinda like Webtoon, ya dig?_

 _I apologize if my review responses are kind of weird today..it has just been a LONG week talking about nothing except retail. Kill me._

 _I hope to get the next chapter out as soon as possible, so don't expect to be kept waiting for very long! Thank you :)_

 _-Mima_


	12. Chapter 12

Ruby let the silence remain unbroken in the air. If she were convinced that she could get back to her own apartment without passing out, she would have left a while ago. Instead, she curled up on the couch, drinking bottle after bottle of water until her stomach felt sore.

When Roman decided not to divulge the details of the supposed "deal" he made, Ruby formed an intention to remain silent and keep their relationship as amicable as possible. She would not have cared either way, but she realized that the best through-line would be on good terms. In the event that both she and Roman did survive, future diverging from what she remembered, Ruby assumed that no matter what she decided to do next, she wouldn't want Roman going after her head.

She passed the time by reviewing the instrumental figures in the year that they had left. Ozpin had a notion of what was to come, so he would likely be of some assistance now. The issue would arise in developing a stratagem to keep their operation under the radar—that is, if Salem and her faction don't already know that Ruby was here. Would there have been some interference that someone else could have picked up on? Was there already a plot in motion to put an end to her schemes? Or could she interpret the lack of significant change in the past as evidence that she was momentarily safe?

In either case, Ruby still worried over the thought of how far she could afford to go in telling other people about the situation. She had no idea if there would be any temporal consequences to telling the public that their fate essentially rests with their local crime kingpin, but she didn't think it was a good idea. Back when she had first discovered that Roman's genetics could be used to reverse-engineer a cure, the few people who knew about it had polarized opinions. Some were willing to give him a second chance in this new development, but others insisted that he should only be kept on life support while scientists make full use of his body until it was no longer required.

In the present moment, communication towers still standing, telling one person would equate to telling the world—if they believed her to begin with. The ensuing reaction would only be galvanized in mass panic of the news that the world could face its end, and Ruby would lose any sort of autonomy in the decision as to what would happen to Roman. The government would make the choice, and Ruby would have no say in the matter.

Ruby coiled up at the thought—as altruistic as her actions may be, she knew that she was going to make the selfish choice. Roman was right. This was no longer her world, and it was hardly her duty to protect it, but if it wasn't her world, too, why was she still in it?

At the end of the day, whether it be her duty or an indulgence of her own wishes, she compelled herself to save Roman's life on her own terms.

Ruby sat up, suddenly inspired to begin forming a plan of action. "I don't know what to do about the White Fang," she said, gathering her belongings, "but you can do what you want and we can figure it out from there."

Out of the corner of her eye, Ruby saw Roman glance up at her briefly before looking back down at his laptop.

"I'm going," he responded.

Ruby drew in a sharp breath, walking to the door as quickly as she could afford to in such a delicate physical state.

"Are you sure you're alright?" Roman called out.

Ruby stopped, a sudden rigidity running through her as if she had been caught doing something wrong. "Yeah, uh—" Ruby stammered. "I'm good."

"You were dealing with some pretty brutal GI shit. Your stomach is no doubt empty."

"I'm fine," Ruby defended. "You think I can't take care of myself?" Her eyebrows scrunched closer, twinged with annoyance.

"I think you should put some gas in the engine before you push yourself again." He closed his laptop and faced her head-on. "I'll order you some food."

"I don't need to eat right now. I'm good." Ruby turned away from him and pulled the strap of her bag over her head.

Ruby stomped her feet down on the floor as an expression of her defiant and dedicated attitude. Her back still slouched, but the large quantity of water in her gut did her no favors. She held her head up high as she opened the door to the apartment and walked out.

As soon as the door fell shut, the wind in her lungs funneled out of her in a spiraling huff. A numbness prodded her fingertips, signaling an unusually low blood pressure. Unfortunately, she had to admit that he was right. At the very least, she hardly considered herself capable of walking all the way back to her apartment even if she did take the subway. Contrastingly, she had been through worse—and this was hardly comparable.

Ruby puffed out her chest and willed herself to stand upright.

* * *

After ten hours of work, Ruby examined her work, all of it pinned up to the wall. She had recreated a thorough timeline of the future, lined with newspaper clippings of events that had already taken place. The wall itself began to haunt her with strange flashes of old memories she hadn't thought of in years. Visceral in her perception, the vision told her that she was still on the same track as she was the first time. Certain headlines gave her the strangest sense of déjà vu even though she was almost positive that she had never read them.

Her memory wasn't the sharpest, but perhaps the few words that triggered a sense of recognition had been tossed around often enough that they made her way into Ruby's subconscious peripheral. She could not shake the nagging feeling that she was missing something, but the instinct was so vague that she wouldn't be able to make anything of it. Ruby had no intention of waiting around when time was only fading, but she had no choice.

Ruby sighed, turning away from the wall and pulling her shirt over her head. She walked into the bathroom, shucking her clothes as she went. Balanced on one foot to pull her shoes off, she turned the knob over the bath. The water ran cold over her fingers as it always did, but she could boil two pots on the stove. One for tea, and one to warm up the bath. Her socks removed, she stuck her foot into the tub to press the stopper into the drain.

As she walked back into the kitchen, she tied her hair into a loose bun. Her eyes grazed the wall once again, spattered with her notes. After firing the stove, she dragged her clothes rack in front of her bed. Ruby may not be able to get the demons out of her head, but the sight of them wouldn't disrupt her effort to sleep—a small consolation.

When the pots began to bubble, she poured one over a bag of cheap green tea, dumping the other into the tub. With the mug stalling at her lips, Ruby ran over the broad strokes of the year to come in her mind. She always knew that there would be some things that she didn't know, but now she was beginning to suspect that some of them could be fatal.

Ruby set down the mug, not having taken a sip, and went to her bag. She removed the burner phone and dialed Roman's number from memory. The line barely began to ring before he picked up.

"Ruby, what is it?" Roman answered.

"I'm missing too many pieces. I need inside information," she stated plainly, walking back to her wall, arms crossed tightly over her chest.

"You should know better than I do that you're not going to get what you need from me."

"I know," Ruby said. "That's not what I'm asking." She placed her finger on the day marking the Fall of Beacon. "I need to get inside Cinder's operation."

Roman groaned audibly over the line. "This thing has been years in the making. She's not going to trust someone I just introduced to her."

"No shit," she said. "But then again, she doesn't trust anyone she works with. And I don't want you to introduce me to her."

Roman chuckled. "Huh, sounds fun. Call me tomorrow and we'll. I'm a little, uh, busy right now."

Ruby scowled. "Thanks. Didn't need to know."

"Know what?" he laughed. She could just imagine the smirk on his face right now.

"Bye." Ruby hung up the phone and set it on the countertop.

She feigned a gag reflex as she dipped her toe in the tub.

* * *

 _Ayyyyy what it do, ma peeps? Sorry I haven't updated in a while. If you looked at my post on the forum, you would already know that I have been super caught up with getting ready for next semester. I wanted to make this a little bit longer for y'all because you guys have been waiting for so long, but I figured it would have been better for me to update sooner. I'm probably gonna have the next update up sometime this week._

 _neverfadehaz: too true. So many good stories don't even make it to the finish line. :'( I promise I will try to finish this story even if homework bends me over._

 _Thank you guys so much for reading! Have a wonderful week!_

 _-Mima_


	13. Chapter 13

Ruby woke with her cheek plastered across her laptop, legs tangled in her sheets. Her eyelids slowly fluttered, guarding her vision from the cutting glare of unrelenting sunlight. She pulled her sticky cheek off her laptop and pushed herself into a sitting position. Having neglected to put anything on after her bath, Ruby shivered in the cold air of her apartment with nothing but a thin bedsheet to wrap around her body.

She folded her legs over the edge of bed and stood. Her limbs recoiled from the breeze running over her skin, but she persisted and reached for a pair of sweatpants. Hopping into her clothes, Ruby opened her laptop and searched for a weather forecast. Today's prediction called for cloud cover and a cold snap, neither of which Ruby had any clothes for.

Her clothes kept her from getting colder whenever she moved, but they had no effect on the goosebumps prickling her skin. She made small strides to her patchwork wallet, a binder clip holding together her credit card, a fake ID, and barely enough lien to buy a soda from the convenience store down the street. She wasn't too keen on committing credit card fraud, but she needed more supplies. Although, she did have one other avenue to pursue.

She picked up Roman's burner phone and dialed his number.

"Hello?" he slurred in answer. His voice came across groggy and disarrayed.

"Roman, it's Ruby. Did I just wake you up?"

"Yes," he said. "What do you want?"

"Cash. About ten thousand lien." Ruby fiddled with the hem of her shirt.

Her sudden declaration of intent snapped the exhaustion straight out of his voice. "What the fuck do you need that kind of money for?"

"Clothes, shoes, and a high-powered rifle with a scope."

"Jesus, fine. Whatever. I'll bring lien over later today. Give me the specifications of the model you want and I'll find a drop for you next week."

"Got it."

He hung up the phone, and Ruby pulled it away from her face to set it down on the counter. Roman seemed more agitated than usual, and Ruby didn't know whether to attribute it to having woken him up or whatever business he was _occupied_ with last night.

Ruby folded a pillowcase and put it over her eyes, tying it to her face with a strip of gauze. It wasn't comfortable, but it would do the trick. She walked back over to her bed and settled back down onto the mattress.

* * *

Ruby jolted in her bed to the loud banging on her door. Her body trembled in shock even as she jumped out of bed and started spewing apologies as she walked up to the door. She undid the deadbolt and pulled the door open.

Roman stood in the doorway with a scowl on his face. "I see you got a deadbolt like I told you to."

"How long have you been waiting there?" Ruby rubbed her eyes, steadying herself on the doorframe.

"A minute. The pins in this thing are worn to shit." Roman pointed to the lock on the door. When Ruby reviewed opening the door in her mind, she realized that she hadn't unlocked the door before opening it. "I'm surprised no one has broken in yet," he continued.

"Day's not over," Ruby said. She walked back over to her bed and sat down on the edge.

He set an envelope on the counter. "There's your cash. Do you have the specifications I asked for?"

Ruby jumped. "Crap, no. I'll write them down right now." She pulled a piece of paper off her nightstand and began to write down details.

He walked over and peered over her as she wrote. "How would you even know that much about guns?"

"If you remember, I have one on my scythe."

"Yeah, but you're a teenager."

"I built it myself."

Roman scoffed. "No, you didn't."

"All students at Signal build their own weapons. Don't you know that?"

He said nothing, but Ruby figured he had made a face or rolled his eyes while she wasn't looking. She finished the list, circling the key items, and held the note out to Roman.

"You better have twenty-twenty vision if you want this loadout," he remarked.

"I actually have above-average vision. Most of my family is far-sighted, anyway." Ruby curled her legs up to her chest, folding her arms around them. The door hung open, letting a cold draft pour into the space around her. It made her shiver, but she could also attribute that to how she just reminded her of Roman's blatant implication of what he was doing last night. She hardly wanted to think about it—the thought of him in that context made her cringe.

"Do you, now," he said, evidently distracted. How long did it take for him to get bored?

Ruby tensed, watching him idle in her apartment. She wanted him to walk out of the door so she could lie down like she was so badly tempted to do. But he stood there with a finger between his teeth, shifting weight between opposing sides of his body. "Do you need something?" she finally asked.

He took a moment before he raised his eyes from the floor. "No, I was just thinking about how you told me you wanted to get closer to Cinder's operation. How were you planning on doing that?"

Ruby shrugged her shoulders. "I was thinking that maybe I would just ride along for the most part. I don't think I actually need to _meet_ Cinder—I just need to keep track of where that is, and that doesn't even become common knowledge."

"So you don't know how, you just want me to figure it out for you?" Roman asked.

"Hey, in my defense, only time I ever considered breaking the law was when the government fell apart. You're much better than I am at evading fully functional law enforcement." The tone in her voice bordered on accusatory, but Roman appeared unaffected. She didn't think he was paying attention.

"Are you going to go out for clothes right now? I'm not really busy today, so I can help you figure that out."

Ruby shook her head, daydreaming of putting it back down on her pillow, feeling her neck stretch when it swayed with the pull of gravity. She had to force her eyelids to stay open with sheer willpower.

Roman watched her as she struggled for a moment before reaching up for the collar of his jacket, pulling it away from his shoulders. When the sleeves slid off his arms, he threw it onto the edge of her bed.

"Please do me a favor and don't catch a cold. I don't have time to be sick," Roman said. He turned on his heel and walked out of the door.

Once Roman was out of sight, Ruby fell back against the bed, stretching her arms so far that it forced a yawn out of her chest. First thing she intended to do was to buy a heater for her lousy apartment.

* * *

 _Hey guys! More updates, and I am so worn out holy crap. Soooooo I'll keep this short and update later. Is there an angel of sleep I can pray to?_

 _Rosewick267: Thank you! I hope your semester goes well, too. On the bright side, I probably won't update frequently enough to interfere with your homework. I hope you are successful :)_

 _neverfadehaz: thank me when I actually follow through lmao but also bless your soul_

 _ilysm bbs_

 _-Mima_


	14. Chapter 14

Ruby wrapped Roman's jacket tighter around her chest, guarding herself from yet another breeze that swept through the streets. She huddled the jacket under one arm and pushed the shade further up to better cover her eyes. The sky was overcast, and it probably didn't make much sense for her to be wearing sunglasses out in this weather, but Ruby preferred weird looks from people she didn't recognize to the spark of realization in her friends' faces. She could not afford to be discovered.

On the other hand, she remembered that today was exam day, so very few people—if any at all—would be around to go shopping. However, with Ruby's semblance, her younger self constantly made trips out to Vale that would cut right under the wire on her schedule. She could always make it back in time, even if she were buying weapons cartridges thirty minutes before she had to sit down and take a test worth thirty percent of her grade.

Lucky for her, she was nowhere near any of her favorite shops. In fact, she was right in the middle of commercial district, home to the malls, boutiques, and overpriced shops that she hated the most. Security might just follow her around in every store she would walk into, but so long as she paid, Ruby didn't think she would have any problems with them.

Ruby picked a random shop along the street, sign blocked by scaffolding, and yanked the door open, stepping through the threshold of warm air blowing in the entryway. The immediate stench of perfume floating through the foyer alerted Ruby to the fact that she either just walked into a high-end department store or a crappy mall. But upon visual inspection of the way the staff dressed, she realized that it was the former. Ruby groaned.

The staff paid no mind as she walked over to the far wall, lined with racks of crisp clothing hanging delicately from their respective hangars. She drew her fingers over the fabric, feeling the materials between her forefinger and thumb.

"Is that a Jean Atelier?"

Ruby jolted, turning in the direction where the question came from. One of the staff stood behind her, covering her mouth as she giggled at Ruby's plight.

"What?" Ruby asked.

"Your coat. Is that a Jean Atelier? The detailing of the threadwork even on leather is so evocative of his work. It's gorgeous."

"Wha—oh." Ruby looked down at Roman's jacket on her body. "This jacket's actually not mine."

"Oh!" she exclaimed. "This isn't actually mine." Ruby examined the inner lining beneath the lapel. It did, in fact, bear a label with a threaded inscription, "Atelier."

"Well, your boyfriend has good taste," she said, smirking.

"W-what? He's not my boyfriend," Ruby laughed nervously, holding her hands up in a defensive position.

"Sure," she cooed. "Anyway, do you need any help finding anything today?"

"Uh, actually, yeah, I need some pants and shirts for a work uniform." Ruby look around the shop. It was a splash of vibrant colors, all of them too floral or poppy for her intent.

"We do have some basics on the next floor. These down here are just our seasonal items."

"Oh, thank you," Ruby said. She walked past her and up the stairs to the next floor. The section was color-coded, but each of them were more late-summer, early-fall tones. No simple black pieces in sight. Ruby grumbled, examining the price tag on a random shirt to assess whether it would be worth her time to keep looking. It read "fifty lien."

"Hell no," she muttered, turning on her heel and walking back down the stairs. Once she was out the door, she pulled her shades off her face and tucked them into the collar of her shirt.

Patience thinning, she pulled her scroll out of her pocket and searched for a department store. One displayed as being only six blocks up the road from her. She sighed and began walking down the street.

The air brushed across her exposed skin and put chills in her body despite the thick material of Roman's jacket. He hadn't contacted her since yesterday to get it back, but so long as he didn't ask to get it back, Ruby wouldn't say anything. She had to admit-it was a nice jacket.

* * *

The sale items in the junior section were all located two floors below the ground. Ruby flapped the edge of her shirt to mitigate the sweating, but it was no use—all the air around her was a warm, humid mess. She didn't like to think about the fact that she was probably walking around in a cloud of vaporized sweat while the lights tested her potential for epilepsy. She instead tried to focus on the clothes in front of her. She found three hoodies, five pairs of black jeans, and a wide assortment of black tank tops. She figured that their necklines were supposed to dip a lot lower instead of riding up her waistline, but at the price they were being sold at, she didn't care.

Ruby picked up a pair of boots in her size, slung the rest over her arm, and walked to the checkout counter. She wiped a line of sweat away from her brow.

"Find everything okay, miss?" asked the cashier.

"Yeah," she huffed, drained of her energy.

The cashier rung up her items in silence, but the noise was filled with clicking heels, obnoxious pop music, and discombobulating lights. He cleared his throat and announced her total. Ruby removed the appropriate lien and handed it to him, clearing her own throat in kind, but it was dry and scratchy. She was evidently dehydrated.

He handed the change back to her and sent her off with, "Thank you. I can help the next person over here."

In the elevator, Ruby started to feel dizzy. Roman was right, she probably should have gotten more rest in compensation for how most of the water she drank didn't have much of an effect on her since she blacked out. In a moment of brief reprieve, she realized the elevator was quiet. Not even her apartment was this silent, and even if she couldn't hear horns honking in the distance or gunshots, her mind filled the void with an endless stream of sprawling thoughts that made her head spin. But with her slipping state of consciousness, she could shut all of it out, at least for a little while.

Ruby knew that she would have to take care of herself eventually—she had no intention of passing out on the street. She made a deal with herself: she would walk to the convenience store by the apartment building and buy water, painkillers, and earplugs. The next couple of hours would be nothing but dead silence.

* * *

 _Hey guys. Last chapter for at least a couple of days. I move in tomorrow, so I have to get a lot of stuff done. I just want to express my appreciation for how much you guys have been supporting this story, and, well, me ever since I took over creative control. So thank you guys so much. Sera asked me to let you guys know that she's gonna get back to writing soon because she finally got everything sorted out with the university. You'll see more details later when she posts about it on the forum._

 _Rosewick4Ever: Thank you! And about Roman and Ruby flirting...it's definitely not going to be traditional. BUUUUUT I still think you'll like it. I hope I hear from you again in the future-I'd definitely like to hear what you think about how this story pans out._

 _To everyone who is going to be starting a new semester soon, whether it be at high school or college, I wish you the best of luck! I'll see you all next time :)_

 _-Mima_


	15. Chapter 15

**Trigger warning: slight mention of depression and suicide. Stay safe.**

* * *

Ruby pulled the scratchy black hem of one of her new shirts as far down it would go, draft skimming along her skin. Fall had set in with a deep defiance that swept the warmth out of her apartment with no budget for air conditioning to replace it. Ruby let the hem bounce back to her belly button, reaching for Roman's jacket and pulling it back around her shoulders, settling into her bed. With her arms wrapped around her knees, she lifted a cup of tap water to her lips, drifting away into the perplexing web of constraint.

Following a plan never felt as foreign to her as it did now—Ruby felt as if she were missing something important, a caustic piece to the puzzle. But after weeks of work, no new revelations appeared in the clustering webwork of the future to come. Her efforts seemed pointless, trapped in a fallacy of infinite possibility. Ruby had no problem acting without knowing the full scope of her situation, but in this case, she had no choice but to wait for all the pieces to show themselves. However, as she was learning firsthand, no criminal organization will volunteer the kind of information she needed.

"Hey, Roman," she mocked, rolling her eyes, "Wanna tell me about all the illegal stuff you plan to do in the next couple of months? Don't worry, I _definitely_ won't tell the police."

Ruby scoffed. Yeah, right.

She poured the rest of the water into her mouth, falling onto her back. The ceiling, littered with fragments of peeling paint and water-damaged drywall, greeted her as a reflection of the state of consciousness she lived in. Her sense of urgency had disappeared. Why panic and fret when the world is still in a time of quiet peace? All of her loved ones were walking around safe and sound, so why worry now? The answer may have been obvious, and the age of tomorrow would come in a million shards of broken glass, a pale and fragile blue. The same color in Neo's lips when she was beyond saving, the same color she can expect to see if she continues to walk around and do nothing.

The sky would open and pour out its hell across the ground, spreading wall to wall with such a vicious fervor and unrelenting disease that would tear through the entire city and destroy _everyone._ But that wouldn't rouse Ruby out of her bed. A part of her welcomed the chaos because it was inevitable. No matter what she did, it would come for all of them, and in the future that she will fragment, she might be endangering even more lives. In the event that one of her loved ones gets infected sooner, will doctors be able to manufacture a working cure fast enough to save them?

Ruby marked a difference in her mind: most days, she would step away from such dark thoughts and turn to more optimistic alternatives, but today, she felt like letting go and seeing just how far down she could go.

She opened her burner, dialing Roman's number with shaking fingers and holding up to her face.

"What is it now?"

"Come over," Ruby said.

"Excuse me?"

"I can't be alone right now."

"Uh," Roman sighed, "I don't think that's such a great idea."

"Since when do you fucking care?" Ruby spat. "You've hurt so many god damn people that 'good idea' probably doesn't register in your brain anymore."

"How passionate. What do you want?"

"Someone to keep me from doing something drastic."

"I am the man to call when you _want_ to do something drastic. As you have pointed out, I'm a terrible influence."

"Fantastic. Piss me off for all I care. Make fun of me until your jaw is sore. I don't care."

"Jesus Christ, what is wrong with you?"

"I don't know," Ruby said, voice shaking in her throat. "Alone is just the worst thing I can be right now, and I don't have time for stupid shit like therapy."

"Well, all right then. I found a guy with a rifle at your specifications, so I'll bring that over when I finish up here. Try not to jerry-rig a new chandelier before I get there."

"Don't be snide. Just hurry up."

"Patience, Red. Four hours."

The line went dead, the phone falling out of her hand.

"What does he mean, 'new chandelier?'" Ruby thought aloud.

* * *

Ruby twiddled her fingers, Roman sitting on the couch with a heavy glare. Neither of them had spoken since she had opened the door for him, even as Roman was pulling the pieces of her new rifle out of his bag.

He drew in a sharp breath, as if preparing to speak, but no words came out. At the same time, Ruby exhaled, scrambling for something to fill the awkward silence. Her eyes avoided his, fidgeting under the knowledge that he was still watching her.

Her stomach grumbled. "Oh shit," she remarked.

"You didn't buy yourself food with all that money?"

Ruby looked up at him. "I bought beer," she defended.

"That's not food."

"It's very filling."

Roman scratched his chin and reached for his back pocket. "Pizza?"

"I don't wanna break out," she whined.

He squinted at her. "You're kidding, right?"

Ruby rolled her eyes and walked to the kitchen. "Whatever, just order the damn pizza."

Ruby opened her bag and withdrew a small package that fit in the palm of her hand. It cost far more than it weighed, but the packaging was very sleek, showing only a brand name on the surface.

"What's that?" Roman asked.

"Nothing. Don't worry about it." Ruby slid the outer layer off and looked inside at the device: a small, pod-system vaporizer.

Roman appeared beside her, standing over her shoulder and scoffing. "What'd you get that shit for?"

Ruby slapped the box down on the counter and cringed away from him. "Can you not do that?"

"Do what?" he sighed, leaning on one arm.

Ruby turned away, rubbing her hand against her arm. She pushed a pod into the slot with fumbling fingers and lifted the piece up to her mouth.

"Is that your first—"

A burst of coughs spilled from her mouth, Ruby spewing clouds that stung her eyes. "Oh my god," she groaned.

Roman laughed. "Oh, and that's only three percent."

"How would you know?"

"I smoke. A lot."

"I know," she scowled. "Did you smoke a pack before you walked in here?"

Roman smirked in response. Ruby regained control of her lungs and raised the device back to her mouth.

This time, the cloud came out in a shaking breath, but she limited her coughing with a handful of tap water straight out of the faucet. Ruby shook her hand and walked to her bed, picking up Roman's jacket, tucked under the sheet so it wouldn't get cold under the draft.

Roman watched her quietly, noting the way her limbs loosely filled the sleeves that were snug around his arms. She almost appeared childish, but her head turned back towards him, and in her eyes he spotted a self-assured look in her eyes—the kind that sparkled instead of glazing when she drifted off into her own personal world.

"What?" she muttered.

Roman swallowed.

* * *

Hey everyone! I know, it's been a while. It's finally fall break, and even though I only really get two days to unwind, this is the first time I have ever found time to write for all of you guys. Or shower. Or sleep. Or _breathe._ UGH college is so stressful. Sera has it even worse—she has been all over the place with the honors school and whatnot. Us hanging out is just doing our homework in the same room, so yikes. ANYWAYS I'm glad to be back. Sera will update soon once she gets back from home. So look out for that.

And no, it's not a fucking juul. They only lowered their prices to get people to buy their overpriced sets of pods. Stop buying vape at a gas station. Some other things: three percent is thirty milligrams of nicotine—and yes, that is a LOT. It just goes down easier because it's not free base, but it _does_ still affect the body in the same way. Three percent would hit about as hard as a regular cigarette, but to a novice smoker/vape nation citizen, that kind of vapor in your throat is gonna hit hard and make you dizzy pretty quick. That should have you up to speed with the references I made in this episode. If you would like to learn about the rest of the science behind vape, try google. Helped me.

Another side note…you may have noticed a couple of common trends at this point, and yes, I didn't realize that was what's happening because I was just writing what I know, but yes, these _are_ symptoms of depression that Ruby is displaying. PSA, you don't need to be suicidal to be depressed, and none of the DSM-5 symptoms really reflect what anyone is _actually_ feeling when they're chronically depressed. So if you find Ruby's behavior disturbingly similar to yours, please, do the research, take a lot of Vitamin D, and find a person to talk to about any issues. If you would like, privately message me and I'll do my best to provide resources that will be able to help your situation. Be safe, and remember that the world is too big to not have people out there who would love to get to know you.

See you guys next time!

-Mima


End file.
